Great Article: : Dean, Tom Paine and traditional religious liberalism

[Armstead]

Whether or not you are a Dean partisan, this is a really good article from The American Prospect about what he represents that has captured so much enthusiasm.

It's basically the spirit of traditional religious liberalism and participatory democracy that grew out of New England.

As a New England liberal raised in this tradition, this article did touch a chord with me. Howeard Dean represents the kind of grass-roots politics that are mainstream here. It's what used to be the mainstream model for the entire country, before the unholy trinity of Korporate Kash, Right-Wing Fundamentalism, Slick Spinners and Mediua Whores took over our political and social values.

It's also, IMO, what we need to get back to. And it's what many HONEST CONSERVATIVES AS WELL AS LIBERALS want to see restored. It's basic American values.

As the article says, regardless of whether Dean goes all the way, the spirit he represents is something that people are hungry for, and can reassert the values of liberalism and democracy if we can somehow take things back from the Spin Doctors and Whores.

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http://www.prospect.org/print/V14/10/franke-ruta-g.html
Shock of the Old
Win or lose, Howard Dean has become town crier for a liberalism that long predates FDR.

By Garance Franke-Ruta
Issue Date: 11.1.03

EXCERPT:

No, Dean is something altogether different. He is more a product of geography -- and his was a chosen geography, as he was born in New York City -- than ideology. The more one watches him on the stump (and watches his admirers watching him), the more it becomes apparent that he comes out of, and is reviving, a tradition of small-town, New England civic and religious fervor that is all but forgotten in American politics today. He is something the country has not seen in a very long time. He is, essentially, a northern evangelist.

<snip>
But Dean's grasp of the American political psyche is firmer than that: Dean's bet is that somewhere -- buried in some back corner, under layers of Oprah and American Pie, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Eminem and the latest Field Poll from California -- there's a little bit of Thomas Paine in each of us.

This quality in Dean's rhetoric -- that he is appealing not just to people's partisan leanings, nor to their particular ethnic or gender identities but to their history and identity as Americans -- is what has made him compelling to so many liberal voters who feel America is no longer even trying to be a "City upon a Hill." Instead of fearing the legacy of northeastern liberalism, he has embraced it as the philosophy that founded contemporary democracy, created America, kept it whole during the 19th century and fought to expand the franchise so that African Americans and women could participate as full citizens. When the other presidential contenders have tried to reach back past the Great Society, it has often been to connect with the last northern Democratic president, John F. Kennedy. And Dean? In the Boston speech, he quickly mentioned the 1960s and the New Deal -- but he built his address around the Sons of Liberty, who had carried out the Boston Tea Party. At his formal announcement speech, he skipped past JFK and went all the way back to John Winthrop, a Puritan settler, theologian and early governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, quoting these words: "We shall be as one. We must delight in each other, make others' conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together."

<snip>
Dean is, without a doubt, an odd vessel for the quasi-religious fervor he has inspired. He almost never mentions God in his stump speeches and he rarely goes to church himself. Nevertheless, his rhetoric -- like his campaign structure -- is deeply grounded in the social practices of a branch of radical Protestantism whose tenets still wield power in the structures of Vermont's government. The Pilgrims who gave America its foundational governing documents and ideas -- ideas that Dean now routinely references -- created a society based partly on the anti-authoritarian religious principles of Congregationalism, their religion (and, since the early '80s, Dean's).

Congregationalism, the dominant religion of colonial and early federal life, had by the 20th century become an obscure New England denomination about as relevant to modern life as covered bridges. Yet the legacy of the Congregationalists -- and their Unitarian descendants -- is one of the most powerful forces in the history of the American North. It was Congregationalists who landed the Mayflower on Plymouth Rock in 1620. Their descendants founded America's elite colleges, such as Harvard and Yale, and some of its most liberal ones, such as Oberlin and Amherst. Where the South bred agrarian populists and Baptist revivals, the North churned out Unitarian and Congregationalist ministers.

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[Armstead]

1. kick

[janx]

9. Thanks for posting this. The article seems to be referring

to classic liberalism and uses "religious" in the general sense.

That does not surprise me about Dean; I noticed this in his Restoration speech, and I'm always glad to hear more of it and about it.

[Armstead]

10. Well, I wanted to get attention

Religion always stokes the fires around here. Personally, I think this article hits a nail on the head about that -- the reserved form of traditional religion that historically found its expression in liberalism is still alive and well among many people. It's also a way to get beyind the "in your face" dogmatic nonsense the fundies try and throw at us.

[CWebster]

2. Always liked that flinty New England practicality he has too.

I liked the stories about him washing his old suits and shirts in the machine.

People claim he is a Centrist, but that is in a State that repeatedly elects Bernie Sanders, whose Republican, Jeffords, defected in the current climate and whose most successful business model is Ben & Jerry's.

New Englanders have that strong Independent, no-nonsense quality that is an antidote to these heavily spun times.

[Armstead]

11. Ideology matters less the more it's taken to human scale

Personally, I think one reason ideology has become so venomous and divided today is because we've moved to lavels far beyond human-scale interactions and communities, and the give-and-take of ideas.

In real communities and politics when peopel deal more directly with each other, labels become less important. People still fight and squawak at each other, but it's more real and less about image or ideological "branding."

[dsc]

3. Wjile we certainly could do worse than the people to whom he is being

compared; I do think this is a bit of a stretch. Dean is a very secular candidate. Certainly Lieberman, Kucinich, and Sharpton are way more religious than he is. Clearly he has no interest in the role for religion in public life that they advocated. I do think he is on to their strain of participatory democracy and that is good.

[Armstead]

4. That's part of the point though

Many New Engalnders are religious. But it's a "live and let live" form of religion. We don't wear it on our sleeeves or try to impose our particular dogmas on anybody else.

IMO that's a lot healthier than the currently fashionable forms of religion.

[dsc]

5. Jennings Bryan was no piker

in regards to imposing religion on people. Prohibition also was largly religion driven. Is Dean a secular version of this? I don't know.

[Armstead]

8. Populism versus liberalism

These are two different strains of religious-oriented reform.

The term "populism" in a historical sense is different from traditional liberalism, in terms of roots. Jennings was more of a populist, which is not above using religon in a political sense.

Liberalism is more "hands-off" regarding the role of religion in secular life. People may have religious values and put them into practice, but they do not attempt to impose religious dogma on people. It grew out of the "diesm" that people like Tom Paine epitomized -- he believed in God, but disapproved of religions based on interpreting the "will of God" in temporal affairs.

(The current definition of populism is not necessarily involved with religion one way or another. But we -- and I include myself -- sometimes forget about its actual meaning.)

[blm]

6. The writer got this part right, "his rhetoric".

Why doesn't anyone question the fact that this "rhetoric" Dean has embraced this year for his campaign does not represent HOW he campaigned and governed his entire career. Where's the honesty in governing as a centrist and coopting Nader's 2000 campaign rhetoric?

[Armstead]

7. If you read the article....

the author does not paint him as a saint.

But in a real democracy of the type this refers to, the notion of being a "centrist" is meaningless, because all politics is centrist when it is on a human scale.

The current notion of "centrism" is so harmful because the status quo it supports is not mainstream or liberal but corporatist.

[blm]

14. I agree wholly that centrism for corporatism's sake is the danger.

That's why I deeply suspect the populist rhetoric coming from someone who received the highest rating for all Democrats from the CATO Institute.

[Armstead]

15. CATO is libertarian

They are generally on the conservative side of things, but they are not knee-jerk right-wingers. They often are against Bushism and corporate welfare.

[blm]

18. They are still corporatists and push deregulation.

And as far as corporate welfare goes, Dean was an avid participant. He was known for making business friendly decisions, without any armtwisting needed. It's part of his core principles, Armstead. Go look at his record. Try Business Week type of articles.

[Armstead]

19. I know...I'm a neighbor of Vermont

I live close enough to Vermont that Dean has long been part of the local (or at least regional) news here. He was a mixed bag. What is corporatist on the massive scale of national politics is less heinous when it's connected with a more human-scale region.

But I do think there's a larger point to that article. In order to be able to even envision a more progressive agenda, we've got to get back to traditional liberal principles on a more grass-roots level.

[poskonig]

12. Pragmatist philosopher John Dewey came from a similar background.

Very interesting read. Thanks for posting this!

[Malva Zebrina]

13. I like Dean

and the article is good , but I wish that everyone would just keep religion out of this election. Period. It only opens the door to a big religious tug o war between the candidates as in the last election where it turned into something that was absolutely disgusting. --what good does it do to open that can of worms in an election?

[Armstead]

16. Alas, we're stuck with it

I also wish everyone would keep religion out of politics. But in the current climate that has become impossible.

What I appreciate about the way it's dealt with in this article, however, is that it addresses religion in a way that is non-religious. That's the way religion has traditionally been (at least in the 20th Century) until the Pat Robertsons of the world decided to hijack Christianity for the right wing. This, at least, is a reasonable liberal alternative.

[JNelson6563]

17. yep, just got my copy the other day

Very good article and loved the pic!!

Julie

[ulysses]

20. thank you.

Dean aside, the idea that that we all carry a little Paine around with us is a heartening one. :thumbsup: